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...but that was probably fudged for the movie's sake. I remember a picture in Starlog magazine showing the cast and crew in front of the exterior of the cargo containers on Ceti Alpha V, and they looked like the above pic.

IIRC, Mike Okuda didn't have a thing to do with STII. And more to the point, why would they go back to the Bontany Bay and fit the seatbelts/cargo straps from that ship to an Enterprise cargo container?

The Botany Bay was designed with detachable cargo modules. I always assumed it was one of them.

He might have possessed background information that you and I don't have. I'm sure he can correct me if I'm wrong. Quite frankly, if anyone has that Starlog pic I referenced, you'd be able to tell right away that they're cargo containers as seen in TMP.

*EDIT* Here's a pic I found from a trading card (sorry it's so small):

Logically, they recovered the Botany Bay and took it apart to give Khan and his followers the maximum amount of raw material to use to survive. This was supplemented by supplies and cargo from the Enterprise. There would be lots of crossover of material as they built stuff.

__________________
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. I'm making this up as I go."

TOS-R sort of puts this to rest by explicitly showing how the Botany Bay is abandoned in space, cargo containers (or whatever those five remaining wedges out of an apparent maximum of 16 are - fuel tanks, perhaps?) and all, long before the action moves to Ceti Alpha.

Kirk probably wouldn't bother to go back to that ship just to get Khan some survival goods that the Enterprise could easily provide herself. And Khan doesn't appear to have all that much stuff down on the planet anyway. Quite possibly, just a few crates of Khan's personal belongings, books and the like, were beamed from Botany Bay to Enterprise while the two ships were flying in formation, either by Kirk or then later by Khan. And perhaps a few of those were strapped together with belts containing the originating ship's name.

Alternately, those containers being hauled around by workbees in ST:TMP are in fact an old model, its standardization going back all the way to the 1990s, and thus the Botany Bay happened to have some aboard, too. Many of the cargo straps inside the containers seem to serve no function other than hanging from appropriate fixtures - sort of suggesting they are scenery coming with the rusty walls, rather than vital items carefully removed from the Botany Bay and installed here for a purpose.

And the ones in which Khan lives are obviously "double-enders", with two curved walls, as per the above picture featuring the wall stenciling. If the interior height is still a tad too much to be plausible (it's about twice the ST:TMP height!), we can argue that Khan removed the bottoms of the containers and placed the tops on solid stone foundations, and the floor we (fail to) see is actually in a pit.

Or then the containers simply come in a variety of sizes. Added height wouldn't inconvenience the workbees hauling these things, nor would it affect the stacking of the containers on the floor of a starship cargo hold, or on assorted other flatbeds. It would simply make the higher containers incompatible with the fancy wall sockets, but that may be of little concern overall.

Also, at least some bits of the containers did explicitly come from Starfleet, as per this pic...

We appear to be looking at three double-ender containers here, with the workbee "train" backbone still attached. If the containers were brought down via cargo transporter, the backbone probably wouldn't be there. So apparently we are to assume that a workbee with the cargo train can land on a Class M planet to deliver its load.

It need not have been a particularly soft landing - the aftmost container appears to have broken off and sits at an angle. Still, the ability to get down is a surprising one, as both the bees and the cargo clusters have the appearance of strict zero-gee hardware. Even the flimsy-looking shuttlecraft have more elements we can interpret as powerful lifting engines or other gravity-defying devices. And the workbee itself would apparently have been capable of lifting off again, as it's missing here (and if it did have that capacity, Kirk would surely have insisted on taking it away from Khan!).

...Perhaps the cargo train backbone was just a convenient place for fixing a big parachute? Those are still used in STXI, despite the existence of antigrav tech, so they might be a valid way of deploying Khan's huts, too. The less high tech he gets, the better.

We appear to be looking at three double-ender containers here, with the workbee "train" backbone still attached. If the containers were brought down via cargo transporter, the backbone probably wouldn't be there. So apparently we are to assume that a workbee with the cargo train can land on a Class M planet to deliver its load.

It need not have been a particularly soft landing - the aftmost container appears to have broken off and sits at an angle. Still, the ability to get down is a surprising one, as both the bees and the cargo clusters have the appearance of strict zero-gee hardware. Even the flimsy-looking shuttlecraft have more elements we can interpret as powerful lifting engines or other gravity-defying devices. And the workbee itself would apparently have been capable of lifting off again, as it's missing here (and if it did have that capacity, Kirk would surely have insisted on taking it away from Khan!).

...Perhaps the cargo train backbone was just a convenient place for fixing a big parachute? Those are still used in STXI, despite the existence of antigrav tech, so they might be a valid way of deploying Khan's huts, too. The less high tech he gets, the better.

Timo Saloniemi

Thanks Timo. As you well know, I'm pretty good at finding pics of obscure ships

However, I'm still trying to find a bigger pic, and so far no luck. I distinctly remember a photograph in Starlog showing the containers; although I originally thought it was the backdrop of a cast/crew photo, but the only pic like that has the Genesis cave in the background. Maybe someone has this trading card they could scan?

We know what Khans says: That all they had were the cargo pods, but it is possible that Kirk dropped a full pre-fab "starter kit" (tents, the 23rd version of a Quonset huts, basic tools) and when things went to shit the cargo pods were all that survived to provide protection.

As for a reason to go grab the Botany Bay: Brig. Having Khan on board is risky, he nearly took the ship and killed Kirk. He swings back, grabs the Botany, beams Khan and co over to the ship (after knocking out the engines) and impulse tows the ship back to Ceti Alpha V.